“I’ll try to reach Clutch again,” I said abruptly and ran through all the channels we used on the radio. After a few minutes of hearing nothing but static, I rummaged through my backpack and pulled out a can of Spam and some crackers. We’d taken all our rations for the remainder of the week to play it safe.
When we’d left this morning, we’d said no good-byes. Instead, Jase and I had dropped a note on the counter before we’d made our way for Justin’s house. By then, we’d already known that we were either leaving to search for Clutch, Griz, and the rest of the squadron or getting arrested.
I grabbed a spoon and popped open the can of salty meat. “I’ll eat an early lunch, and then we can switch seats, Tom,” I said before scooping out a sliver of the meat and squeezing it in between two stale crackers.
Tom didn’t take his eyes off the road. “I can eat and drive.”
“Tut, tut,” Jase scolded from the backseat. “Clutch hasn’t ground that rule into you yet?”
“Which rule is that?” Tom asked.
“Everyone needs to focus on his one job. The driver focuses on driving. The passengers focus on looking out.”
“Cash is eating while looking out,” Tom countered.
I nodded. “But all I have to do is sit here and look. You have to be ready to slam on the brakes or crank the wheel in case something happens.”
Tom smiled. “And what do you think is going to happen out here? Any remaining zeds are too slow. The Black Sheep are gone, and the roads are clear.”
I shrugged. “You never know. You have to be ready for anything. Or, like Clutch says, you always have to keep a step ahead.” I found myself thinking back to everything Clutch had taught us. I knew I wouldn’t have lasted the first day of the outbreak if he hadn’t taken me with him to his farm. He’d saved my life, Jase’s life, and that of so many others.
Still, he didn’t think he was worth anything. Idiot.
“One time,” Jase began, “Cash and I were flying over this one small town, looking for survivors, when we came across this flat-roofed building. Some folks had run out onto the roof. We turned to drop the official Camp Fox goody bag—some food and directions to Fox Park—when they started to throw bricks at us. For real. They even had a big slingshot set up and everything. If Cash hadn’t banked hard right then, we would’ve been clobbered.”
I chuckled drily. “Yeah, we didn’t always get the welcome mat rolled out.”
“But, you tried to help. That’s what counts.” He slowed down. “I’m getting hungry. Here’s a good spot to refuel and switch. At this speed, we’ll be to Omaha within a few hours.”
“We’d be there already if Tom could drive faster than thirty,” Jase said. “I think I just got my first gray hair.”
I smirked but didn’t say anything. Tom wasn’t comfortable driving fast. Safety was more important than speed. Even though every fiber of my being wanted to rush into Omaha to find the squadron.
I dumped the empty Spam tin into a plastic bag, glugged a long drink of water, grabbed my rifle, and looked outside at the flat Nebraska fields, with only the interstate dividing the land.
Tom shifted the truck into Park and cut the engine.
When he went to open the door, I grabbed his arm. “Hold on.”
He glanced back at me. “What?”
After a moment of scanning the wide-open space around us, I relaxed. “I’m used to zeds running out from every direction to eat me. I guess I’m not used to the quiet yet.”
“It’s okay,” Jase said. “I had the same gut reaction, too. It’s weird, not expecting zeds anymore.”
“There are still plenty out there,” I cautioned. “We still have to be careful.”
“But they’re frozen stiff by now,” Tom said as he opened the door and stepped outside.
I couldn’t open the door without scanning the area one final time. This particular section of the interstate had no cars on it. The roadblocks of crashed cars seemed to be centered at the cities and towns. Weeds grew tall in the shallow ditches and as bold tufts in the unplanted fields. Something could hide in there.
“Cash, it’s all clear,” Tom said.
“I know,” I said and pushed open the door. Frigid air blasted my face.
Jase followed. He stayed near me, and it grated on my nerves to know that he felt the need to protect me, when it was supposed to be the other way around.
Tom was already up on the truck bed and unraveling the fuel hose and portable pump. He connected it to one of the three, 55-gallon drums of gas we brought along with us. He handed me the clear plastic hose. I slid my rifle over my shoulder and grabbed the end of the hose. Jase stood watch while I opened the gas cap and slid the hose in. “Ready,” I said.
Tom started pumping. At first, a slow trickle of gas ran through the hose, and then more and more came. Tom continued to manually pump for a tedious ten minutes, and I listened to the gas going into the tank. Jase walked casually around the truck, doing a full circle every couple of minutes or so.
When the sound of the gas gurgling in the tank changed, I held up my hand. “It’s full.”
Tom stopped pumping and wiped his brow. Even in the freezing air, he was sweating from pumping gas. Once I shook out the last drips from the hose, I pulled it from the tank and handed it back to Tom, who unhooked the pump and rolled everything back up.
He jumped off the back of the truck and rubbed his hands. “We’re all set.”
I nodded and headed back to the truck.
“Shotgun,” Jase said as he butted in front of Tom at the passenger door.
“After you,” Tom said rather sarcastically before stepping back, opening the back door, and climbing in.
I strapped myself into the driver’s seat and started up the truck. Immediately, warm air belted out from the heater, and I savored the heat on my skin. Jase picked up the map from the dash and studied it. A quick glance to the backseat showed Tom biting into some kind of tortilla wrap. I shifted the truck into gear and slowly picked up speed.
Before the outbreak, I’d had a lead foot. Two speeding tickets a year was my average. Now, I never drove above fifty-five for two reasons. One, the faster I was going, the less time I’d have to react; and two, driving any faster would hurt the gas mileage. Even though I was anxious to find Clutch, I would’ve been stupid to rush. For all we knew, they hadn’t even made it to Omaha.
Tom spoke in between bites. “It’s kind of peaceful out here with nothing to remind us of the outbreak.”
“Yeah,” Jase said before taking a bite of his own lunch. “If you don’t count the complete lack of anybody on an interstate except for us.”
“I don’t miss the chaos of what life was like before,” I said. “But, I sure miss a lot of the conveniences we had.”
“It’s like Mother Nature forced a reboot,” Tom said. “When people knocked the world out of balance, she sent in a disease to knock things back into line.”
I considered his words for a moment. “You’re assuming the outbreak wasn’t man-made.”
“You’re assuming it was?” Tom asked.
I shrugged. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. I remember there was a lot of speculation in the first days, but no one came out and said, ‘this is the cause.’”
“I think the worse assumption,” Jase started, “is to assume the outbreak is going to reset the balance. This isn’t Star Wars, and there’s no ‘force’ out there to help keep a balance,” he air-quoted. “You’ve seen what the virus is doing to animals that feed on the zeds. The virus has only one goal, and that goal is to destroy. It’s the Grim Reaper of viruses.”
“Wow,” I said. “When did you become the philosopher?”
A red light came on the instrument panel, and I frowned.
Check engine.
“Uh oh,” I said. “Tom, you don’t happen to be car mechanic by any chance?”
“I didn’t own a car until I was out of college,” Tom replied. “Why?”
“What’s wrong?” Jase asked.
I tapped on the instrument panel, even though I knew that did no good. “I think that last batch of gas was bad or had water in it. Either way, the engine isn’t happy about something.”
“It still sounds okay. Maybe it’s a fluke,” Jase said.
“Fingers crossed,” I added.
Tom leaned forward to look over Jase’s shoulder at the map. He pointed. “Take the next exit. If we need to swap vehicles, we should take a county road. There would be more houses, so hopefully, a better chance for finding a vehicle. If the battery is dead, we should be able to swap in the truck’s battery. Then, we’ll be good to go.”
My muscles tightened as I gripped the wheel. It took only three miles before the engine started to make a clacking sound, metal pinging on metal in a regular rhythm.
Jase pointed. “There’s the exit. Now, if only we can keep this beater going until we find new wheels.”
Evidently, the truck didn’t relish being called “beater,” because the very next second the engine sputtered and died. Several lights blinked on the instrument panel. “Shit,” I said. The truck’s momentum slowed without power. My heart pounded with every foot of ground it covered. I found myself leaning forward, to edge the truck farther down the road, but it crept to a stop on the inclined exit ramp.
“Da da da dun,” Jase chanted ominously.
I scanned the area around us for a house, danger, anything.
Tom spoke. “Robert Frost once said in a poem something like, ‘I have taken the path less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’”
“Yeah, but Frost never said if that difference was good or bad.” I grabbed my rifle and my binoculars and stepped outside. I walked around to the back of the truck and climbed onto the bed and then onto the roof. Cold wind blew through my jeans. Shading my eyes against the sun, I made a count of the buildings in the area.
Jase climbed up next to me, and the roof dented in. “At least we have some options.” He pointed. “I’m thinking we go for those two houses across the road from each other.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said, looking through the binoculars. “Both have all their garage and building doors closed. We could get lucky.”
“But the house to the north is closer,” Tom said from the ground.
“True,” I said and hopped down. “But, there’s not enough sunlight left to hit all three houses today. With two houses, we have twice the chance of finding a vehicle we could use.”
“And twice the risk for trouble,” Jase added.
“I thought you said you wanted to check out that pair of houses first.”
Jase gave a weak smile. “I thought we
should
check them out first. I didn’t say I
wanted
to check them out first. I
want
to stay in the truck and call AAA, but their service has really gone downhill this year.”
“Well, I say let’s grab our gear and hit the road. I don’t like standing out in the middle of nowhere,” I said and walked around the truck and grabbed my backpack. I rummaged through it and grabbed a ski mask, stocking hat, and gloves.
In less than fifteen minutes, we had the truck pushed back onto the interstate and parked under the overpass, the best camouflage we could think of to minimize its appearance in the unlikely event someone passed through this area.
Jase, Tom, and I walked up the exit ramp and turned left on the small highway. The pair of houses stood about a mile away. Close enough to see their garages were closed, but too far to see any signs of violence or danger.
We kept Tom at a quicker pace than he was clearly used to, but he didn’t complain. I hated being out in the open, especially in an area I wasn’t familiar with. We had no idea what could be hiding within any of those buildings or behind the small cropping of trees. I felt like a sitting duck.
At our quick pace, we reached the pair of houses in ten minutes. We slowed as we examined each one. “Which one do you want to try first?” I asked, looking from the white-and-brick ranch on the right to the blue two-story on the left.
Jase held up a finger. “Eenie meanie miney moe, catch a tiger by its toe. If it hollers, let it go, eenie meanie miney
moe
.” He pointed to the house on the left. “The Smurf house, it is.”
“All right,” I said, rubbing my cold fingers. “Using a startlingly brilliant display of deductive reasoning, Jase has made the call. The garage is detached, so I’d say that’s a great place to start.”
Jase and Tom nodded, and we walked slowly up the driveway, expecting something to jump out from behind the building at any second. I watched the house as we walked by it to the garage, which was set farther back from the road.
“Cover me,” I said and tiptoed onto the porch. The big oak door stood open, a screen door the only barrier between us and anything inside. I could already smell the rank odor of one or more zeds inside. A blend of putrid disease and decomposition. I stayed to the left of the screen door and threw a quick glance inside. Chairs were knocked over. I backed quietly off the porch.
“I’m pretty sure the house still has its occupants, so we should keep it quiet.”
Jase was already slinging his rifle and pulling out his machete.
“They should be frozen,” Tom said.
“You want to bet the farm on that?” I asked as I swapped my rifle for the machete I had strapped to the front of my backpack. “No need to draw any unwanted attention if we don’t have to.”
Jase put a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but between Cash and me, we have thirty-five rounds of ammo left. I’d prefer to save those until I really need them if I can.”
Pride swelled in my chest. In a matter of months, Jase had transitioned from a high schooler to a man. To see him morph into a leader gave me hope for his future. If anyone could make it in this world, Jase could. With everything he’d lost, what would’ve broken most seemed to have honed him. Out of us all, Jase still had the strongest connection to his humanity. Clutch had always been jaded, and I was certainly jaded. But, Jase…he was the best of us.
We spread out as we approached the garage. It was an older building with no windows, not even small ones in the doors.
Jase reached the door first. He put his ear up to it. After a moment, he looked to us and shook his head. I took off my sunglasses and nodded to Tom. “Get your flashlight ready,” I whispered. I stood to Jase’s right and held up three fingers. Two. One.